1. Field of the Invention
The present invention comprises apparatus and methods for making patterned multicolored extruded food products. More particularly, the present invention relates to apparatus and methods for reducing a large cross sectional area patterned food extrudate to a smaller area while maintaining the pattern, and to apparatus and methods for adjusting flow of plastic extrudable food product.
2. Background
Food products such as Ready-To-Eat (xe2x80x9cR-T-Exe2x80x9d) cereals and snack products vary widely in composition, shape, color, flavor, texture, etc. Such products can include both puffed and unpuffed varieties. One attractive feature is their appearance which can include specific attributes such as shape and coloration. Especially attractive are products having a complex but organized pattern of coloration, shape and/or complex shape.
A wide variety of techniques are known to provide complexly shaped products such as rings, stars, letters, figures, etc. Problems generally include how to provide consistently the desired degree of shape detail or resolution in the finished pieces. Similarly, for colored products, a problem is how to consistently provide a fine level of detail. This problem of imparting a fine level of detail is particularly difficult in the provision of complexly patterned R-T-E cereals due to their generally smaller size. The problem is even more severe for puffed R-T-E cereal products due to the very tiny size of the pellets that are expanded to form the finished products. Of course, the pellets must contain and retain the complex pattern and desirably must retain the shape detail.
In particular, it would be desirable to prepare puffed R-T-E cereals having a shape and color pattern reminiscent of various sports balls such as baseballs, footballs, basketballs and soccer balls, such as are disclosed in 1) U.S. Pat. No. Des 373,671 by Laughlin et al. entitled Food Product Piece, 2) U.S. Ser. No. 014,068, filed Oct. 12, 1993 by Laughlin entitled Food Product Piece, 3) U.S. Pat. No. Des 368,791 by Laughlin entitled Food Product Piece, and 4) U.S. Pat. No. Des 368,791 by Laughlin entitled Food Product Piece, respectively, each of which are incorporated herein by reference. Likewise, it would be desirable to prepare puffed R-T-E cereals having a shape and color pattern reminiscent of other food products or of nonfood products such as French toast, such as is disclosed in U.S. Ser. No. 29/065,077 filed Jan. 21, 1997 by Clanton et al. entitled Food Product now U.S. Pat. No. Des. 403,485 which is incorporated herein by reference. Such products are characterized in part by high degrees of resolution such as by line features (such as to indicate traditional sticking patterns) 1 mm greater than  in thickness and even 0.5 mm greater than .
Providing a cereal pellet which upon puffing provides a puffed R-T-E cereal exhibiting such a fineness of detail is a difficult problem to overcome.
Line colored or externally striped food products such as R-T-E cereals as well as apparatus and methods for their preparation are described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,858,217 entitled Cereal Product With Striped Effect and Method of Making Same (issued Oct. 28, 1958 to J. O. Benson) and which is incorporated herein by reference. The ""217 patent describes an extrudate extruder having a color injecting die insert for making a complexly patterned extrudate. However, the extrudate is directly extruded without any reduction in its cross sectional area. Also, the method appears to be limited to producing only flakes in a simple pattern of generally parallel more or less straight lines. The method is not capable of generating a direct expanded cereal or snack (i.e., expanded directly from the extruder) having a line detail of such a degree of fineness.
An improvement or modification in the technique for providing a line colored cereal based snack piece is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,447,931 (issued Jun. 3, 1969 also to Benson et al.) entitled Process For Preparing a Puffed, Concave Shaped Cereal Product. More particularly, the ""931 patent describes a process for making a cup flower shaped R-T-E cereal piece having a complex line pattern. The process involves extruding a plurality of rope dough filaments which are pressed together to form a column or rope without a material decrease in the cross section which is then combined under conditions such that no puffing occurs. The composite strand of compressed filaments is then cut into wafers and which are subsequently heat puffed. While useful, the process appears to be limited to producing only the xe2x80x9cflower bloomxe2x80x9d shape. Also, the pieces prepared are of a larger snack piece size rather than the relatively smaller pieces characteristic of R-T-E cereals.
Especially in commercial applications, the plastic extrudable food product is supplied in an amount to form a plurality of extrudates. Problems then arise that extrudates have uniformity of flow for consistency in the final product, with adjustment of the flow rate and pressure being accomplished without increasing the likelihood of downstream plugging. Furthermore, problems also arise that the extrudates interfere with each other such as by falling on top of each other thereby making downstream processing difficult.
In a first preferred aspect, the present invention provides an improvement in apparatus and methods for preparing food products characterized by at least two colors in an organized pattern. In particular, the present invention provides an improvement in the degree of fineness level of color detail (1 mm greater than ) even on food products such as pellets for puffed R-T-E cereals that are very small (e.g., 3 to 6 mm) in diameter.
In a further preferred aspect, the present invention provides an improvement in apparatus and methods for adding additives in flowing dough. In particular, the additives are added in interstitial gaps imparted in the flowing dough. In preferred embodiments, portions of the interstitial gaps in the interior of the flowing dough are filled upstream of the addition of the additives to prevent the additives flowing into those portions. In that case, it is an aim of the present invention to prevent a disproportionate amount of additives from being on the outside of the flowing dough. In other preferred embodiments, the entire periphery of the flowing dough is topically coated with an additive having a minimal thickness and being of a mass substantially less than the mass of the flowing dough. It is an aim of the present invention to provide additives in the form of a lubricant to obtain better three-dimensional shape detail in the final products and especially expanded final products. It is further an aim of the present invention to provide additives in the form of a colorant to provide exterior periphery coloring of the flowing dough and the final product.
In a still further aspect, the present invention provides a flow rate adjustment apparatus for adjustment of plastic extrudable food flow. In particular, the present invention provides an improvement that the flow of dough is not stopped or allowed to build up which can lead to hardening of the dough, with hardened dough potentially causing plugging problems downstream.